Goodbye, Heritage Resources

By now, just about everyone has heard about Northwestern’s bizarre reorganization and resulting Willy Wonka-esque college names. The news naturally inspired shock and awe throughout the community. Some of these decisions are just plain inexplicable when you look beneath the surface.

For example, after developing the Master of Arts in Heritage Resources (MAHR) into a nationally respected degree, my wife ElizaBeth (tenured, and just promoted to full professor) will be the only faculty member eliminated along with that program. Her equally competent counterpart in the Bachelor of Arts in Heritage Resources (BAHR), Julie Ernstein, will be the only person to go with that program.

I’ve watched ElizaBeth and Julie work tirelessly over the last few years to create an environment where their students can enjoy an Ivy League educational opportunity at a state university. The programs have succeeded with graduates who are contributing to cultural heritage throughout the United States in really big ways.

The case against eliminating the programs

I do understand the severity of the budget crisis. Still, disposing of two uniquely sustainable programs and the two people that made them that way makes no sense on any level. Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. These low-cost programs have brought in a half-million dollars in grants. Their 2007 grant proposal to the Board of Regents was ranked first in the state. 2. The MAHR program partners with local organizations to pay half the cost of graduate assistantships. No other NSU graduate program brings in this kind of money, so it’s odd that MAHR is the only graduate program being eliminated.

3. Local organizations like the Natchitoches Historic Foundation have gone on record that they will fundraise to keep heritage resources at NSU alive. NHF has endowed one scholarship for the MAHR program and was about to fund another.

4. The MAHR program is NOT a low completer by Board of Regents standards. In fact, it’s considered a program on the rise. 5. When MAHR was placed on the “review” list, the program was supported with dozens of letters, phone calls and personal meetings from the community.

6. BAHR was not originally on the list of programs for consideration by the Program Review/Elimination Committee. 7. The interdisciplinary concept for these programs was developed here at NSU and is now being replicated at universities across the country, including the University of Florida. Guess those folks will now become the torchbearers for this important legacy.

8. If not for the recovery operation mounted by the MAHR/BAHR students, faculty and alumni, the contents of APHN’s Bayou Folk Museum would have been totally lost when the Kate Chopin House was destroyed by fire in 2008.

What the loss meant

The heritage resources programs should be held up as a model for some of NSU’s other degree programs (including one I hold a master’s in) that would compare much less favorably in the sunlight of a genuine review process based on academic integrity.

The prospect of having to leave my hometown because someone else is unable to make an intellectual leap is disappointing. Then again, I can’t honestly look at my child and say my best hopes and dreams for her future lie in this kind of educational environment. Could you?

That’s a huge realization because the Cane River region is so core to my identity. I wouldn’t have volunteered to write this column for the last two years otherwise. I’m proud this is one of the few places in the U.S. with the diversity of heritage resources and organizational partnerships that could support these kinds of programs so well.

Even when things have not been historically good in Louisiana, we could always look to our cultural heritage as a source of pride. But our heritage is jeopardized every time our state encounters another disaster. Right now, NSU heritage resources students and alumni are on the ground in the middle of the oil crisis, safeguarding our heritage resources with the skills and training they learned here.

More information about both BAHR and MAHR can be found at natchitochespreservation.ning.com (http://natchitochespreservation.ning.com). Feel free to stop by and help keep the legacy of these groundbreaking programs alive.